Posted
by
Soulskillon Wednesday September 14, 2011 @08:12AM
from the i-throw-old-crt-monitors-out-of-my-car-on-the-highway dept.

itwbennett writes "The only way to rapidly and cost-effectively devolve computer products is to know the composition of the products. But we don't, says blogger Tom Henderson. This industry — largely at the behest of COMPTIA members — pioneered bar coding schemes, asset tagging, and inventory control, and could now also add rapid product devolution to its list of credits. We need a taxonomy, a method to affix material markings, and a database access method that tells the devolvers how to make money. Do this and you could be a billionaire and a hero, says Henderson."

Or forget about the complexities of a marking scheme that will only be found on a subset of dumped products, many of which will predate any mandatory scheme.
Instead, how about analysing the trash on-the-fly? If only there was a cheap open source chemical analyser available...